


i'm sorry (say it at a whisper, i am never far away)

by beepbedeep



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, HIIIIIII they are the CUTEST, casey is patient and wonderful, izzie is equally wonderful they are BOTH SO GOOD, izzie trying to be honest but also being very very scared, trauma? i guess?, we are on a ROLL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 22:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21417421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: Izzie is scared, Casey is there, and somewhere in the middle they are unable to escape one another - lucky thing neither would ever, ever want to
Relationships: Casey Gardner/Izzie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 138





	i'm sorry (say it at a whisper, i am never far away)

Casey will never understand how scared Izzie is. 

It’s a good thing, because even though Casey’s life isn’t easy, she fundamentally has people that love her. She has a family who take care of her. Izzie doesn’t. and that’s fine, she’s fine, because Izzie is a quick study and learned how to protect herself years ago – she prepares for the worst and manages her expectations (people will let you down, always) and it’s ok. 

Maybe her coping mechanisms aren’t pretty – maybe they make her periodically cruel, but she lies to people at school, (acting as if she belongs there) or lies to her siblings, (saying that everything is going to be ok) or lies to her boyfriend, (I love you) or lies to herself (all of the above) and builds a wall around herself, like an exoskeleton. Izzie is a fortress, a carefully constructed barricade of her own making, and yes, there are costs to her system, but Izzie can’t afford to be soft, not anymore. She needs to be strong and tough and unflinching and driven, and she can’t do that if she expects the world to be kind. It works out, the loss of intimacy in favor of protection because that’s how she needs to survive, for years, long enough for her to forget what honesty feels like. 

Until, of course, she meets Casey. The thing about Casey is that she can’t be anything but honest – she is fully herself at all times – and if Izzie hates her at first it’s because she can read Casey’s every thought on her face and she’s jealous, ok? She’s jealous that someone so good at all the things Izzie strives for hasn’t had to sacrifice her openness so Izzie uses the best weapon she has, because she has been the recipient of unexpected cruelty enough to inflict it upon others without blinking, and she strikes at this new (surprisingly beautiful, surprisingly not what Izzie was expecting, surprisingly life changing) girl’s soft, trusting underbelly faster than either can blink. It’s not until later that she wonders if that reaction was more of a reflex than a conscious choice, if survival has turned her into something of a monster. (Izzie will never know the answer to this, because Casey saves her before she can really figure it out.) (Casey does nothing but make her better)

That’s the other half of this equation, Casey saves Izzie. Somehow, she slips underneath Izzie’s walls, avoids the electric trip wires and poison spikes, and wriggles up to Izzie’s side, almost before Izzie can tell what’s happening, and once she’s nestled in there Izzie is too distracted by how nice it feels to push her away again. Casey is steadfast, strong, and sturdy in comparison to Izzie’s constant fluctuation, and they make a good team. 

But still, Izzie fucks up. Casey is so good, but the prospect of even being her friend terrifies Izzie sometimes. (all the time.) She’s there, always, always and Izzie doesn’t know what to do with that. Casey doesn’t play games, doesn’t hide how she feels, she’s so honest it hurts and Izzie doesn’t know if she can bare herself in the same way. (really, it’s that caring is scary. Izzie doesn’t care about new people – not anymore.) 

She looks out for her siblings and tried to keep their mom out of trouble and Nate was nice to her for a while, but she can’t get invested in someone new. She can’t care about anyone, it has never ended in anything except desolation for her.) So she pushes away. Case in point: Casey kissed Nate and Izzie got so freaked out by the idea that she cared about Casey more than Casey cared about her (heartbreak, tragedy, unrequited love is a bitch and all that) that she didn’t talk to Casey for weeks. 

But. Izzie gets a little less scared of being around Casey every day, and even when she is it doesn’t matter, because staying away isn’t an option, not really. Izzie can’t let Casey go, because she had made herself essential – things make more sense when Izzie repeats them to Casey, running is better when they do it together, Casey’s bed is easier to sleep in than her own, Casey’s food tastes better, even if they got it in the same cafeteria, running is better when Casey is by her side. 

It’s like Casey filters out the reason why life is awful, and leaves beautiful things in their place. (the beautiful thing is her) So Izzie is terrified, shaking, but she can’t imagine life without Casey, happiness without Casey, movie nights without Casey. Not since the first time Casey slung her arm around Izzie’s shoulders and Izzie could swear she was melting. Casey is the best thing that has ever happened to Izzie and she doesn’t know what to do with that, if she should fight this attack against her barriers or relax into the gentle glow of being known. (it’s a good thing Casey doesn’t give her a choice, because Casey needs Izzie just as badly as Izzie needs Casey, because sometimes there are people that make every little thing better and after that nothing is ever really the same.) And at the same time that being friends with Casey is petrifying, it’s also kinda the best thing in the world, because it works. It works, so well, and it’s not easy but the level of difficulty doesn’t even factor in because it feels so good. 

Izzie doesn’t want to hurt Casey, and she is SO good at hurting people, thanks to her mom, her mom’s boyfriend, her whole fucked up life. She runs and hides, and when she flees she doesn’t have time to think about whether this hiding will hurt someone, and it usually does. But Casey has scaled her walls, and Izzie is fast, and so good at fleeing, but Casey is very, very fast too. 

So Izzie gets better, a little at a time, with every conversation, with every silent hug. And it’s not easy, because worthwhile things usually aren’t, but they work it out. Izzie is getting pretty good at apologizing, she thinks. Which is good, because the things she needs to apologize for keep getting bigger. It started small, with a casual “hey, I’m sorry. About how things were when you got here. I suck.” Casey had shaken her head at that, because by now she gets how Izzie works, and understands the context – the constant stress Izzie’s under, how hard it is for her to let her guard down, but Izzie had also seen Casey’s shoulders relax, just a little bit, and decides that an admission like that is totally worth it if Casey trusts her a little bit more. The things she does to upset Casey grow in magnitude from first-day-snark to being admittedly awful to Evan at Paige’s dinner party, until they land at you-kissed-a-random-boy-at-a-party-you-should’ve-been-kissing-me. 

And that’s when Izzie knows Casey likes her, really, because she accepts the apology. And Izzie is terrified, terrified, because she hurt the person she likes the most in the whole world because she was scared, because she doesn’t know how to be as functional as Casey is, and all she can do to make it better is walking into the panic, into the terror, to offer up the truth. It works. Casey nods (she will not be scared away by honesty) and hears Izzie, hears her confession about fear and running away, and smiles, leaning in to kiss her. So yeah. They just might be ok. They might be safe.


End file.
